Climate Change – Page 6 – Auxiliary Memory

33 Reasons Climate Deniers Can’t Give In

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Yesterday, I read a moving article in the New York Times, “Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students,” about a student, Gwen Beatty, waging an emotional war of words with her science teacher, James Sutter, over climate change. Gwen’s passion for defending her beliefs made me feel for her, but I agreed with her teacher. For years I’ve wondered why climate change deniers tenaciously cling to their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence they are wrong.

Gwen Beatty’s unmovable emotional stance is a clue to why deniers can’t give in. At first, I thought deniers were being pugnacious for political reasons, and then I realized there was a religious dimension to their stance. Here are 33 reasons why some climate deniers probably can’t give in.

Creation of Adam by Michelangelo_700

To accept climate science means accepting science.
Accepting science means accepting an indifferent random reality.
Science shows reality is explained by evolution and not theology.
There is no room for God if evolution is true.
Without God, there is no need for Jesus.
Without Jesus, there is no salvation.
Without salvation, there is no heaven, hell, or eternal life.
Without all of the above, there is no need of The Bible.
If these things are true then liberals might be right about other things.
If humans are the cause of climate change then we should fix it.
Fixing climate change requires rethinking capitalism.
To fix capitalism requires more regulations and control.
More control requires a larger government.
A larger government requires paying more taxes.
Solving climate change means abandoning old sources of wealth.
Solving climate change means telling businesses how to operate.
Solving climate change means telling people how to live differently.
If science if right about climate change it’s probably right about other issues.
Humans are causing mass extinctions.
Humans are polluting the planet and destroying the ecosystem.
Humans are overfishing the oceans.
Humans raise too many animals for meat consumption.
Humans mistreat animals.
Humans are ethically responsible for the balance of life on Earth.
Humans, not God, decide what’s right and wrong.
All people are equal regardless of their color, gender identity, or sexual preferences.
That we have to think globally and not locally when it comes to human rights.
That the soul might not come into existence at conception, or even exist.
That it is unethical to let people live in poverty.
That everyone deserves an equal education.
That any kind of discrimination is wrong.
That borders are arbitrary.
That theocracy is evil.

I could go on. I wonder if accepting climate change is an uncrossable line some conservatives have drawn because they know crossing it means toppling the first domino that leads to the 33 beliefs above.

JWH

Thrown Off the Grid Kicking and Screaming

by James Wallace Harris, Friday, June 2, 2017

Last Saturday, Memphis was hit by a storm that knocked 188,000 customers off the grid. As of Friday evening, 17,514 are still without power. I’m one of them. However, I’m not doing too bad. A neighbor lets me run an extension cord to his carport. When the storm hit I was without power for several hours, and then it came back on partially. Evidently, one of my two 110 circuits coming from the transformer had problems. So I turn off everything that I could. Things that took 220 just wouldn’t run at all.

On Tuesday I got an electrician to look at things and he suggested I shut down all my circuits that weren’t getting a full 110 volts. He checked each at the breaker box. I had fans, TV, computer, and even the refrigerator (but I had to run a cord to an 110 socket that worked.) Then on Wednesday an MLGW guy came by and told me and my neighbor that our circuits were not working right and he had to pull us completely off the grid for safety reasons. I was bummed. Losing my partial electricity felt like being thrown out of the lifeboat. However, I called my other neighbor and he threw me a lifeline. I’m able to run a fan, a lamp, the refrigerator, and my internet router off one orange extension cord coming through the window.

Several of my friends were without any power for days. Back when we had Hurricane Elvis, Susan and I went without power for 13 days in July and August heat. I’ve had the power go out at this house several times for 2-3 day, in summer and winter. I’ve written about these adventures before “Living Like Jane Austen,” “Blogging by Candlelight and Paper,” and “Are You Prepared for a Natural Disaster?”

Living without electricity is no fun but very educational. I’m extremely glad to have my lifeline to Ernie’s house. A fan makes all the difference between misery and comfort. I’ve been reading many books written in the 19th century these last few years and I can’t imagine how people survived without electric power. I would never time travel back to their times. I wonder what future Americans will have that they believe they can’t live without but we don’t know about yet?

This time I have LED lanterns, which are much nicer than candles. And I have a smartphone. One time the power was out I got out an old Sony Walkman and played cassette tapes of old radio shows for entertainment. Having an iPhone 6s Plus has made all the difference this outage. I don’t feel isolated from the internet.

I guess I’m addicted to two grids: electricity and the internet.

Having that extension cord means I’m just barely on the grid. It teaches me what I really want most when it comes to flowing electrons. I have chosen four items: a fan, a lamp, a router, and a refrigerator. The fan is the most essential. I’d let my food go bad before I’d give up the fan.

I’ve been thinking about buying a generator for next time. I hear my neighbor’s out behind my house. They are noisy as all get out. I’d want one that’s quiet or could be made quiet. So I’ve been thinking about how to build a little doghouse for a generator that would protect it from rain, thieves and baffle the noise.

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I bought The Grid by Gretchen Bakke but haven’t read it yet, but I’ve read enough about the book to know the grid will be even less dependable in the future.

I know of five times this house has been without electricity for more than 2 days, but that’s over a twenty-year period. However, with climate change, this could happen more often. We’ve been told this is the third worst outage in MLGW’s history. The main problem is trees and straight line winds or ice storms. This will always be a problem because we have lots of trees and power poles. Moving to a newer neighborhood would help. [Note to self – make sure all future living sites have underground power cables.]

During the storm, I worried about trees falling on the house. More than a hundred came down to block roads around the city. I’ve read about people with holes in their roof trying to survive without electricity. I’m thankful I don’t have that problem. I’m surviving okay, but it’s wearing me down slowly. I can’t cook hot food. I’m down to my last pair of clean underwear. It’s so dark I have to take a lantern to the bathroom. But I shouldn’t whine. Much of the world has it worse than this all the time.

We really should vote to raise our taxes to update and renovate the grid.

JWH

Are You An Auto-Brainwasher?

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, April 22, 2017

There is an extreme condition known as the Anton-Babinski syndrome where blind people believe they can see. It’s a visual variation of Anosognosia, where a person with a disability is unaware of their disability. Anosognosia covers a range of delusions dealing with the body, senses, memory, and language. There is a cognitive related syndrome called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where low-ability individuals suffer from superiority illusions. (I can’t help think of Donald Trump when reading that article.) Quoting Wikipedia, here are the essential qualities of the D-K effect:

fail to recognize their own lack of skill
fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
fail to accurately gauge skill in others
recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill

I believe we all fool ourselves. But how far do we go? Are some people auto-brainwashers? Anyone who has read books by Oliver Sacks knows how powerful a brain is at fooling its own mind. I highly recommend you read the articles linked to above, and then ask yourself: Am I fooling myself?

brainwashing

This has very powerful implications. What if you think another person is in love with you and they are not? What if you think you are great at your job and you are not? What if you believe you’re writing the world’s greatest novel and you’re not? What if you think you are brilliant, sexy, funny, and compassionate and you are not? Many people are crushed by self-doubts, but maybe just as many people are brainwashed by over-confidence and delusions.

Take climate change deniers. They believe they know the truth, even though they oppose armies of scientists with PhDs, using trillions of dollars worth of supercomputers, space satellites, rockets, airplanes, drones, ships, submarines, monitoring stations, balloons, and other scientific resources. Are they any less deluded than blind people claiming they can see?

Any individual who thinks they can solve any of the world’s major problems is absolutely deluded. Our reality is intensely complicated. To assume we understand anything clearly is delusional. A reasonable amount of self-doubt is healthy. Too much can be crippling, yet we need enough for humility.

The trouble with being human is we make up stories to explain a limited set of facts. This is called the narrative fallacy. I can’t find a single article that explains it, but the book, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is where I first heard the concept. If a noise wakes you in the middle of a night you can’t stop yourself from imagining scenarios for what caused that noise. From burglars, falling tree limbs, to raccoons, you have to think of something to explain the noise, even if the explanation is wrong. And generally, it is.

This is how we brainwash ourselves. Narrative fallacies lead to the Dunning-Kruger effect if you don’t do a lot of fact-checking. The reason why fake news is so successful is it often fits into people’s narrative fallacy storylines.

Science is our cognitive tool where we statistically study reality to look for consistency. We can only trust evidence when it’s overwhelming. We can only trust evidence when a majority of other people collaborate that evidence with further scientific research. But we are easily fooled by masses who have fooled themselves with auto-brainwashing. Their claims appear to be consistent evidence – but consistent opinions do not equal consistent evidence.

One of the purposes of Zen Buddhism is to deprogram our auto-brainwashing. If you can get your inner observer to back away from its attachments to thoughts it is possible to see how we auto-brainwash ourselves.

My old friend Connell and I have been talking about auto-brainwashing lately. Terms like Dunning-Kruger aren’t very effective, or memorable, so I’ve started using the phrase auto-brainwashing. Once we accept that a concept exists and have a good label for it, it’s possible to see it in action. With the idea of auto-brainwashing in mind, study yourself and your friends.

What do we see that’s not there. What’s there that we don’t see?

JWH

Have We Accepted Rising Oceans as Inevitable?

by James Wallace Harris, Thursday, March 16, 2017

I’m reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest science fiction novel, New York 2140. The story depicts a future New York City through the eyes of a wide cast of characters, reminding me somewhat of Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. Robinson’s characters are survivors of a massive rise in sea levels. And even though they face horrible problems, their problems don’t seem any worse than those we face. The message is we always have problems, and we always solve them in a muddling way.

I’ve felt until now that climate change fiction warned us to avoid environmental doom. Have we already given up the battle? Are we now accepting rising seas and mass extinctions as inevitable? Donald Trump’s budget came out today, and it’s all too obvious he’s not going to fight climate change. Has everyone else given up too, including science fiction writers, of returning CO2 levels to below 350 ppm?

It is quite clear that conservatives have chosen lower taxes over action to stop global warming. Their greed knows no bounds, just look at their health care proposal. They prefer a tax cut for the rich over any Sermon on the Mount compassion. They pretend to believe climate change is not real, but I can’t believe they’re that stupid. I wonder if they haven’t psychologically accepted rising oceans in exchanged for lowering taxes and deregulation windfalls?

New York 2140 is a very entertaining novel, but I’m wondering if Robinson isn’t taking a Pollyanna view of the future. His New York City of 2140 is vibrant and alive, even after the oceans have turned it into a new world Venice. If I wrote science fiction my 2140 NYC would look a hundred times worse than New Orleans right after Katrina. My novel of a doomed city would be closer to Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren. Robinson makes 2140 NYC horrible but exciting, even attractive.

KSM is considered a very realistic science fiction writer, but isn’t he also overly optimistic? Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, and 2312 reveal a lot of hope for the future. Is Robinson being too hopeful? We have to ask ourselves if civilization can survive runaway climate change? Robinson’s book suggests we’ll adapt and survive like our species always has in the past. But can we really bank on that trend? I’m not so sure.

I don’t think humanity will become extinct if we don’t reverse rising CO2 levels. We are adaptable. I do think we risk devastating billions of lives, and jeopardizing civilization as we know it. Our current successful civilization depends on relentless economic growth. I don’t think that’s sustainable. The real challenge of climate change is mutating our current civilization from free market capitalism to steady-state capitalism. The neo-nationalism we’re experiencing today suggests humans aren’t adaptable to such a change.

In that sense, I’m not sure Kim Stanley Robinson is right in thinking we’ll continue to succeed like we’ve had in the past. I worry we’re approaching a breaking point. That might happen yet in his novel, I haven’t finished it yet.

I’m listening to the audio version of New York 2140, but I admire it so much, I’ve decided to get the book version and read it too. I don’t think one reading will be enough.

JWH

7 Scary Traits of Climate Change Deniers

by James Wallace Harris, Monday, January 30, 2017

We’ve been hearing about climate change for decades. We’re bombarded with scary documentaries, long range forecasts, books, essays, news reports, science fiction on what global warming will do to Earth.

What I find even scarier are the psychological traits of climate change deniers.

The power of denial might be eviler than actual climate change. Those traits reveal the limitation of the human mind. Our species, even with the best brains on the planet, might not be smart enough to save ourselves from self-destruction. Here are some psychological traits that could be more dangerous than increase CO2.

Egotism

Climate change deniers reveal their massive egos by their righteousness. The world has spent trillions of dollars on supercomputers, satellites, monitoring stations, laboratories while hiring vast armies of scientists with Ph.D.s to use that equipment. 97% of scientists analyzing the results show climate change is real. As long as we have a significant percentage of human population thinking they are smarter than all the scientists, computers, and science, we’re in big trouble.

Anti-Science

Science is our only tool for consistently understanding reality. Science is based the statistical consensus of evidence. Its methodology is designed to be immune to nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, philosophy or other biases. To reject science is to reject any hope of objectively understanding reality. People who trust science by flying on an airplane or having brain surgery but deny other scientific results indicate that humans might not be rational enough to survive as a species.

Greed

Greed is the main reason people believe they’re right and climate scientists are wrong. Solving climate change requires global cooperation, powerful governments, and taxes, three concepts hated by fundamental conservatives because it undermines their essential gospel of no taxes. In other words, they’d rather get rich than save the world.

Rationalization

The percentage of people who can brainwash themselves into denying climate change is terrifying. Their egos can embrace poorly educated talk show hosts over legions of highly trained scientists reveals a limited grasp of reality. Part of this comes from our ability to believe. The same trait allows humans to accept Jesus and positively know they’ve gained immortality. We can rationalize anything, and that’s dangerous.

Religion

Religion isn’t inherently anti-science. In fact, some churches are embracing global warming as a moral issue. However, hatred of science is a trait of many religious believers. They see science in opposition to religion, and since climate change is on the side of science, they have to choose the other side. To them, the choice is everlasting life and science.

Anti-Fate

Many people deny climate change because they hate fate. Climate change feels too much like fate, even though it isn’t. We can avoid global warming if we choose. Ironically, by denying a possible future they are creating it. They feel climate change represents an inevitable future, and they reject that.

Anti-Responsibility

Another trait of deniers is they deny responsibility to their descendants even when they’re family oriented. Instead of wanting to protect future generations, they shove their heads into the sand. They are denying an obligation to their children, grandchildren, and future generations. Climate change deniers deny the sins of the fathers.

JWH